


Bacon on a Leash

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: due South
Genre: Episode Related, M/M, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8360725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: Fraser, alone with his regrets.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Every Second](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7960885) by [Wagnetic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagnetic/pseuds/Wagnetic). 



> Thanks to wagnetic for blanket permission!
> 
> Look, I wrote a thing!
> 
> Originally posted for the "Punch" challenge (amnesty edition) at [fan-flashworks](http://fan-flashworks.livejournal.com).

_Slap.  Slap.  Slap._  
  
Fraser’s running shoes beat out a steady rhythm against the pavement as the blocks slip by in the artificial twilight that is as dark as Chicago nights ever get.  In the back of his mind, a counter tallies up minutes and kilometres, despite the fact that he doesn’t actually care how far or fast he goes.  He can’t outrun the churn of his thoughts, and the exercise isn’t doing much to calm them, either.  
  
He really ought to go back to the Consulate and get some sleep, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to settle.  Running at least provides an outlet, however inadequate, for his frustration with himself.  
  
_Idiot.  Idiot.  Idiot._  
  
Memories of all the mistakes he’s made in the past few days cycle incessantly through his mind, where the sound of his footfalls becomes the driving thud of fists against flesh.  Ray’s fists pounding the heavy bag.  
  
_Whap.  Whap.  Whap._  
  
Ray’s frown looked like anger, but every blow shouted his frustration, guilt, despair.  
  
_I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better,_ Fraser told him, entirely sincerely—and he would have done almost anything Ray cared to name, to ease the tension of Ray’s shoulders, to put the bounce back in his step and the unselfconscious smile back on his face.  
  
_You want to make me feel better?_ Ray echoed, looking up but not meeting Fraser’s eyes, and Fraser’s heart leapt into his throat to choke him.  Because, for a moment, he thought—he was _certain_ Ray was going to ask Fraser to touch him, hold him, kiss him, do all the things that Fraser has been trying for months not to imagine because that way lies madness.  
  
In fact, Ray asked for no such thing.  On the contrary, what he asked for was a fight.  It was the last thing Fraser himself wanted, not merely because the thought of hitting Ray was repugnant, but because he was fairly sure he could outbox Ray, especially in Ray’s current distracted state.  Fraser couldn’t imagine how the two of them sparring could possibly improve matters.  But Ray had asked.  So Fraser agreed.  
  
It was a mistake.  He knew it before he stepped into the ring, and he bowed out after the first punch Ray goaded him into throwing, but the damage was already done.  Humiliated, Ray tried to win back his lost face by engaging in an even less equal match with Mason Dixon, who pounded him into the mat without breaking a sweat.  
  
And what comforting words did Fraser offer his friend afterwards?  
  
_You feel better?  Mentally and spiritually, I presume, because your physical condition is truly appalling._  
  
He winces at the memory.  He was trying to mirror Ray’s rough and ready teasing, trying to be friendly—but of course, teasing is never _truly_ friendly.  It’s aggression disguised as affection, as Fraser knows all too well.  
  
And Ray knows it, too.  Before Fraser had known the man a week, he’d realized that Ray’s cocky ‘cool’ was largely a posture, a façade to cover the insecurity of someone who’d never been popular, never quite lived up to other people’s expectations, and had recently been left by the one person in the world he’d counted on to truly know him and love him for himself.  
  
In the locker room, Ray heard the insult to his physical prowess loud and clear, and Fraser’s subsequent offer to assist him, though kindly meant, only rubbed salt in the wound.  
  
So, when Ray faced Dixon in the ring a second time, this time in deadly earnest, Fraser let him fight his own battle.  
  
He meant it as an apology and correction of his earlier error.  And for a few moments, he actually thought he’d succeeded.  Ray seemed happy, proud of his success, and justifiably so, as he bragged to strangers about how he’d defeated Dixon in single combat.  
  
But he wasted no time letting Fraser know that, once again, he’d gotten it wrong.  Like Clever Hans in the fairy tale, always following yesterday’s instructions.  Trailing a slab of bacon behind him on a leash to be eaten by stray dogs instead of keeping it under his hat; carrying a calf home on his head and getting kicked in the face for his pains.  
  
_So, you look in the ring and you see this large goon trying to beat your partner and your friend to death with his bare hands. . .Next time?  Help._  
  
There was nothing Fraser could reply to that.  He had failed Ray as a friend, as a partner.  Ray had expected backup, and Fraser had abandoned him to face danger alone.  Dixon had bested Ray easily when it was only a friendly sparring match; why on earth would Fraser have expected Ray to triumph when Dixon was fighting for his freedom?  
  
Of course Ray felt betrayed.  Looking back at it in this light, Fraser wonders why Ray wasn’t even angrier with him.  
  
Though he _did_ beat Dixon, without Fraser’s help.  Fraser can’t help the fond smile that springs to his lips when he remembers Dixon hitting the mat and himself raising Ray’s trembling arm in token of victory.  Ray looked at him, an incredulous smile lighting up his weary face, and Fraser’s breath quickened—just like it’s quickening now, despite everything.  
  
Damn it all.  
  
He knows better.  He does.  
  
_Slap.  Slap.  Slap._  
  
He picks up his pace until he’s panting from physical exertion and not for any other reason.  
  
If he’s lucky, Ray didn’t notice that particular reaction of Fraser’s.  If he’s lucky, Ray hasn’t noticed any number of similar involuntary reactions that have plagued Fraser lately.  
  
He doesn’t really believe he’s that lucky, however.  He saw how uncomfortable Ray was, stripping in front of him in the locker room—not that Fraser looked directly at him, despite temptation.  He’s never mastered the finer points of locker room etiquette, so he’s learned to err on the side of caution.  But even though he positioned himself to avoid seeing more than Ray’s bare back, he could tell that Ray was ill at ease with the situation.  That might well have been due to insecurity or self-consciousness about his physical appearance, or to unpleasant memories of being a late-blooming, less-than-popular teenager.  But Fraser very much fears that Ray was uncomfortable sharing a locker room with _him_ , specifically; that he knows or at least suspects that Fraser wants to look. . .that he dreams of doing so much more than looking. . .  
  
_Slap.  Slap.  Slap._  
  
Best not to let that particular train of thought run away with him, even when Ray isn’t present.  
  
Ray has more than enough reasons to be disgusted with him already.  
  
For example, Fraser’s tone-deaf attempts to imitate the street slang of the young gang members that Ray himself seemed to navigate with such confidence.  
  
_Ray, my very good friend, you're a flying bomb. . . .I'm just getting down with my bad self. . . .411 and ‘sup, houseboys._  
  
_Homeboys, it's homeboys,_ Ray corrected him, before turning to make excuses for Fraser’s _faux pas_.  
  
_He's Canadian. He's a little funny._  
  
Subtext: _Don’t blame me because my friend’s an idiot._ And as much as that stung at the time—as much as it still stings, now—it isn’t as though Ray’s assessment of him were inaccurate.  
  
Good Lord, he speaks two official languages, in addition to Cantonese, Inuktitut and a smattering of several others, not to mention Wolf.  He’s always had a quick ear for languages.  He understands how subtle and complex the usage of local idiom is—which is why he generally eschews it when he’s speaking a foreign language, preferring to sound stilted or over-formal rather than to sound like an over-eager, condescending fool.  
  
_Houseboys,_ indeed.  
  
He hasn’t tried this hard—this ineptly—to fit in since Depot, after which he gave it up as a bad job, once and for all.  Embraced his misfit status.  What the hell was he thinking, affecting the street lingo Ray carries off so naturally despite not belonging to those boys’ culture any more than Fraser does?  Did he somehow imagine that his fumbling attempts would impress Ray?  
  
Well, yes, pathetic as it is, that’s exactly what he imagined.  Just as he’d imagined that Ray would be impressed by Fraser’s cleverness, skill and dedication when he solved the case and cleared Levon’s name.  Instead, well.  
  
_Look, Fraser, don’t hang me out to try like that. . .You pull a little stunt like that and I lose face._  
  
Once again, Ray’s anger was perfectly justified.  Fraser could easily have told Ray his theory about the diuretics and let him take the lead on pursuing the clue.  But no, he couldn’t resist the chance to show off, undercutting Ray’s authority in the process and making him feel like a fool in front of Mort—and in front of Fraser himself, which might well have bothered Ray more.  Never mind that Fraser didn’t intend to one-up Ray; he couldn’t have done it more neatly if he’d tried.  
  
Rather than supporting Ray in his time of trouble, he stole Ray’s victory from him—and then clumsily, ridiculously tried to give it back to him by forcing him to fight Dixon alone.  
  
_Slap.  Slap.  Slap._  
  
If Fraser weren’t already heated from exercise, he’d be flushing with shame.  
  
_Partners,_ Ray promised him on that first, bewildering day they met.  _A one-two punch.  Leopold and Loeb_ (although Ray almost certainly wasn’t aware of the connotations associated with that particular partnership).  Fraser was too confused and angry to take up the offer at the time, and ever since, he’s been playing catch up, trying to win Ray over.  Showing off shamelessly, making a fool of himself, silently begging: _see me, pick me, want me._  
  
The last person he longed this badly to impress was. . .Mark Smithbauer, probably, when he was thirteen, and look how that turned out.  
  
And yet, and yet, some treacherous part of his mind whispers, when they met in Chicago, as grown men, Mark _had_ been impressed by Fraser, in spite of himself.  He had wanted things from Fraser; that hadn’t been the trouble.  The trouble had been that Mark couldn’t offer what _Fraser_ wanted, and Fraser had, for once in his life, been smart enough to realize that.  
  
Ray, by contrast, has offered—is still offering—everything Mark couldn’t: integrity, compassion, loyalty, partnership.  But he doesn’t want what Fraser longs to offer, and he isn’t impressed by him, and if Fraser doesn’t snap out of it and start paying attention to what Ray actually _does_ want from him, it will only be a matter of time before Ray gives up in disgust and cuts him loose.  
  
Respect.  Support.  Courtesy.  Ray wants Fraser to treat him like a professional, like an equal.  He’s been stating it in so many words, from the day they met to this afternoon at the gym.  _Friends and partners_.  No more than that, but also no less.  
  
Ray deserves that, and Fraser owes it to him.  It’s not Ray’s fault that what _Fraser_ wants from _him_ is. . .well, unattainable, leave it at that.  
  
_Slap.  Slap.  Slap._  
  
He’ll just have to try harder, that’s all.  Be smarter.  Kinder.  Friendlier.  Listen harder.  Talk less.  Think before he speaks.  Think about what Ray needs, what Ray deserves.  Do the job.  Be a partner.  Forget about the rest.  
  
Forgetting has never come easily to him.  Still, that’s no excuse.  
  
_Slap.  Slap.  Slap._  
  
Between the skyscrapers, he glimpses the faint grey of approaching dawn.


End file.
